The Grand Cantina — Restaurant in Ontario

I've been going to the Grand Cantina for a while now, and things have always been relatively decent- the food is alright, but I wouldn't say it is anything to write home about. The service has also always been okay, but my experience this past night was truly awful.

I went to the Grand Cantina with a group and one member of my group specified some allergies they had with some of the ingredients, and requested to the waitress to ensure that none of their listed allergies were in the food. Well, after an hour and 20 minute wait, our food arrives, for my friend to find her order had two allergic ingredients (in large quantities) found in her food. Now, this is a simple fix for the restaurant, apologize and bring out a new order- however, instead, the waitress decided to argue with my friend, stating that she did not specify her allergies on the order, as "she didn't feel they were serious enough" to warrant telling the chefs... excuse me??? Since when is it up to the server to determine the severity of my allergy? Adding then insult to injury, when my friend requested to speak with management about this problem, the manager arrived to lecture my friend about how she had hurt the feelings of the server, by saying that they had not done their job correctly.

It is not up to the servers to dictate what allergies are severe and not, and whether they should relay important medical information to the kitchen or not. This is a situation that could have had catastrophic results, and if you have severe allergies, I would recommend being extremely vigilant, if you so choose to dine here, because it is clear that the waitstaff is extremely careless, and overall plain rude.

There are plenty of other gourmet taco places in the Windsor-Essex region that have much more affordable prices, and quite frankly better service and much better food, and I would recommend them before this place. 5/10 Food...

Just to preface, I have been here once 2 years ago and once a few months ago at the old location and had no issues before.

I went last night, and the food was actually inedible. I got three tacos- the ODB, fish taco, and chorizo taco. The corn tortilla on all three tacos was not cooked or even warmed up as they were all splitting on the bottom and it was completely white in color, I thought they gave me flour one's by mistake. The ODB was the best of the three, though my first bite was just a chunk of fat that I had to spit out. The only thing that saved this one was the toppings. The fish taco was inedible. I took a bite, and the fish was so rubbery that I couldn't bite through it, and it came out of the breading completely. I tried to cut it up on a plate and put it back into the taco, but I couldn't even cut through the fish with a fork, so I just left it on the plate. The third taco was the chorizo taco which I took home and included the pictures of. It was completely falling apart, and the chorizo looked undercooked and almost grey in color. I live in Detroit and frequent taco spots regularly, and my go-to taco is a chorizo taco, and this was not it. I actually ended up throwing this taco in the trash because it was inedible.

We also ordered nachos for the table which came out after our dinner items were already done which wasn't ideal, but the nachos were good. My friend ordered a sandwich with a side of duck fat fries, and they gave her regular fries instead. They did rectify this issue at the end of the meal and brought out the duck fat fries.

I was willing to think this was an anomaly but after coming home and talking to a friend today who unknowingly went a couple hours before us on the same day, they expressed the exact same concerns about their food, so I don't think it was an anomaly.

With the price tag attached to these items, it's just...

As a man who loves bananas and all banana flavoured products, I was ecstatic when I was made aware of the fact that this fine establishment served banana ketchup. However, the banana ketchup was slightly disappointing. Below you will find my detailed observations regarding this banana ketchup. Let’s start with the consistency, to no one’s surprise the consistency was similar to that of regular ketchup, there were some particulates in there which I could only assume (and hope) are from the banana. Overall the mouth feel and texture are not bad but nothing to write home about. Next we’ll look at the colour. The ketchup I received almost looked brown from the mixing of the red and whatever colour came from the banana flavouring. This is a far cry from the bright red ketchup colour we all know and love. The brown is reminiscent of a fun Saturday night followed by a bad Sunday morning which made the ketchup look slightly unappetizing compared to regular ketchup. Finally let’s look at the most important component, flavour. Just like my hips, I won’t lie, I can hardly taste the banana flavouring in here. What I tasted just seemed like regular ketchup that had gone slightly off. Most people will say this is unavoidable when you mix two food components so drastically different as a young lovers warm embrace and a cold glance from an elder possibility. I on the other hand am a firm believer in the power of bananas and truly think that they can be mixed with any item to make said item superior. This is why I think The Grand Cantina need to go back to the drawing board and rework the banana ketchup. Perhaps incorporating more bananas or reworking the amount of sourness in the ketchup could help the flavour and make this a more desirable product. In the meantime however, I’d say the banana ketchup can be skipped. They also serve tacos or...